Paved Paradise
by Hazel Fior
Summary: Xander is a vampire. Spike has to help him.
1. Burial of the Dead

iPart One/i

Spike rolled over and stared at the sleeping human beside him. Xander lay on his stomach, his hair mussed and still slightly sweaty, one arm around his head and the other tossed over the vampire's naked waist. The sheet obscured any view of the muscled ass and thighs, but Spike knew they were there. He had just spent two hours getting reacquainted with those particular parts of the boy's anatomy. 

It had been awhile since the last time they were together. Usually, the teenager met up with Spike once or twice a month at the crypt or the bronze, where they more than once had shared a quick fuck in a cramped stall of the men's room. It had been two months since their last encounter, however, and the blond had begun to think it would never happen again. Not that he blamed Xander for that - Spike had seen for himself Anya's voracious appetite for sex. Even though he was still a young man, Xander couldn't satisfy her and have a little something going on the side, too. Plus, the blond had Harmony to take the edge off, although truth be told he often closed his eyes and imagined he was with Xander when he was inside Harm.

But now, of course, that he had the real thing...he let his eyes travel over the sleeping features one last time before he deftly extracted himself from the youth's embrace and stood up. He dressed quickly and silently before making his way out of the brunette's new apartment and down the stairs of the building. It was right at the door leading to the street that he ran into her.

"Spike! What are you doing here?" she even managed to act a little surprised.

He sighed boredly. "Hello Harmony. Why are you following me?"

The blonde girl looked him up and down. "You smell like..." Suddenly, her eyes widened as her brain slowly made the connection. "EEEEEWW! Xander Harris? Spikey, that is so GROSS. I can't believe you're cheating on me with ihim/i." 

Spike's temper began to flare at her words. How *dare* she demean Xander. "Harmony, you stupid bint, it's not possible for me to cheat on you if I'm only using you for a good lay now and again." He began to turn away, disgusted suddenly with both the creature in front of him and himself for having allowed her to come so close to the man asleep upstairs.

Harmony went still, the blond's antipathy clear even to her. "What? You don't love me?" she whispered.

"Love you? Love iyou/i? No one could love you! If you were the last fuck on the planet I'd never ilove/i you." Spike used her shock to push past her with ease, laughing at the pain in her eyes.

Finally the demon reared up in Harmony, breaking through her shock and replacing it with anger. "You'll pay for this, Spike! No one uses me and gets away with it! You'll see!" she yelled at his retreating back.

Still laughing, Spike kept walking toward his crypt, hearing her voice get fainter and fainter as he left her behind.

iPart Two/i

Four nights later, Spike was struggling with his lighter as he stalked across the cemetery toward the crypt. It was an old lighter - an antique, really - and had come to mean a lot to him in all the time he had had it. It apparently had chosen that very evening to stop working for good, which meant that until he got another one, or hunted up some matches, he was without a nicotine fix. Therefore, he was already *very* cranky when he realized the crypt door was ajar and that someone was inside.

He readied the axe he habitually carried around Sunnydale at night, then lashed out and with one powerful kick had the door the rest of the way open while he scanned the interior. 

At last, his eyes picked the familiar blonde figure out of the dimness of the room.

He didn't even bother trying to disguise the annoyance in his voice. "Harmony, what do you want?"

"It's not what I want, Spikey. It's what I've got that you want."

"Now why do I doubt that? Harm, I don't need you anymore. Get out."

"But you haven't even seen my childe yet!"

This time, it was Spike who went very still. "Your what?" He hoped she was joking, or that he had misheard her. There was no way in hell Harmony could be a competent Sire.

"My childe." She said simply, indicating a figure buried under the blankets of Spike's bed. "He hasn't woken up yet, though. I thought you might like to see him when he does. You know, now that he's mine."

Spike suddenly had a very, very bad feeling about this. Striding forward, he yanked the blanket down and stared into the cold, dead face of Xander Harris.

"Xander." he whispered, disbelief making him have to touch the lifeless flesh in front of him to confirm what he already knew. "Oh, Xan...."

Before Harmony had a chance to move or even blink, she found herself on the floor with a vamped out, pissed off Spike holding a stake directly over her heart.

"What did you fucking do to him?" he yelled, even though the answer was obvious.

Harmony started to laugh. "You can't kill me. I'm his Sire. If you ever want to see him again, you'd better be nice to me, Spike. Because now I'm in control - "

Her words were cut off abruptly as the peroxide blond slammed the stake home, watching her crumble to dust beneath him. "Can't kill you my arse," he muttered, standing up and brushing himself off. He sat down on the edge of the bed and gazed down on the man who he had, slowly and almost without realizing it, come to care about more than any other being on the planet. He knew there was only one thing left to do now.

iPart Three/i 

It was an hour later when he finally came to the UC Sunnydale dorm complex. He had spent nearly ten fruitless minutes ripping the crypt apart, searching for his chains, until he finally found them at the bottom of an old, broken crate. It had taken another ten to securely shackle the still unconscious Xander to the bed frame, then firmly shut and place a large padlock on the outside of the crypt door. The last thing he wanted now was some random demon wandering in and killing the defenseless fledgling before he even woke up.

He had to break into one of the housing offices again and look up Willow's current building and room. She had moved out of the room he remembered her being in, and it took him nearly twenty minutes before he found the new room. He knew that Xander could wake at any second, and these constant delays, on top of his lack of nicotine, were making him extremely irritable.

When Tara opened the door in response to his knock, he could see Willow behind her, sitting on the bed. "Good. You're both here. I need you to - " He had started to step into the room, only to be stopped by the invisible barrier keeping him out. "Dammit, Red, let me in."

Willow got up and stood next to her girlfriend's side. "Spike? What do you want?" 

He glared at her. "I need you to let me in. There's something I need to tell you that I don't want to get into when I'm standing in the bloody hallway." He noticed that his voice had gotten progressively louder with each word, but he didn't care. Time was running short, and he was wasting it standing here arguing.

Willow seemed to think about it, then shook her head. "No. Letting you in is too much of a risk."

Spike stared at her in disbelief. "I've still got this sodding chip, you know. It's not like I can hurt you."

"But what about when it stops working? I don't want to come home to find all my fish strung up on a wire...not that I have fish anymore, but I do have Miss Kitty Fantastico, and that would just be ick."

The vampire blinked at her. He simply had no idea what she was talking about. After a second, though, he snapped out of it. "Fine. Then you come out. And bring one of your spell books. I need to show you something."

"You need me to do a spell? It isn't a love spell, is it?"

He glared again. "No, it's not." He sighed. "I need you to give a vampire back his soul. You can do it, can't you? You still have the curse?" 

Willow looked startled. "A vampire? Angel?"

"No." Bloody hell, this was taking forever. "Someone else. Just...hurry, okay? He'll wake up any second now." 

Willow was torn. She wanted to know more about this before she went rushing off, but at the same time any soulage was to the good, right? Finally, she glanced over at Tara, who had already begun gathering the ingredients for the curse. Although Tara had never actually performed the ritual before, both she and Willow knew how to do it and kept the proper components on hand. Just in case Angel ever had a really good day.

Materials in hand, she and Tara followed Spike across town to the cemetery. 

iPart Four/i

Spike had waited until they got to the crypt to tell them the vampire in question was Xander. He didn't want to risk one of them calling Buffy or running over to the Watcher's house before they did the spell. He was not going to chance the possibility of Xander being staked by a well-intentioned Slayer who remembered all to clearly the last vampire with a soul in Sunnydale. 

Thankfully, the youth was still out when they arrived. Willow and Tara stared, shocked, at the lifeless form. "Who did this?" The shy brunette finally whispered. Willow had lost the power of speech.

"Harmony. Stupid cunt. Don't worry, I already staked her."

Fat tears began to trickle down the redhead's cheeks until she just collapsed into Tara's arms, sobbing. Spike allowed her to cry for her friend for a few minutes before he tapped her arm rudely.

"I hate to break up this depressing moment, but we have to do this curse now. He's gonna be plenty pissed off and hungry when he wakes up, and I think it'd be better all around if he had a soul. So let's make with the mojo already."

Willow wiped at her eyes with her sleeve, then focused on the blond. "Why do you care if he has a soul anyway? I thought you'd want to have another soulless vamp running around trying to kill us."

"Little girl, you don't know half of what you think you do." He began unpacking their supplies. "Where do these go?"

* * * * * * *

Once the ritual had been performed, all three simply sat in silence, waiting for the inevitable instant when the demon in front of them would open its eyes. Leaning against the bed, Willow still let out the occasional sob, while Tara held her close, smoothing her hair back from her face and planting small, comforting kisses on her eyelids, nose and cheeks. Spike sat in the crypt's only chair, smoking with the help of the matches the witches had brought for the ritual. None of them had said a word since the orb had let its bright pinkish light go, meaning that Xander now had a soul. The silence in the room was thick and heavy, which was why the sudden clinking of the chains seemed almost deafening. Three heads whipped around and took in the cause of the noise, as Xander's whole body began to twitch. Suddenly his eyes shot open, revealing their gold depths. He stared wildly around him, taking in everything. 

"Spike?" he gasped out.

to be continued...


	2. A Game of Chess

__

Part One

The white mug shattered in his hand when his grip suddenly tightened during the walk from microwave to table. This wasn't the first time Xander had crushed one of his mugs in the two weeks since he had become a vampire, and it probably wouldn't be the last, either. Still, it served as an unpleasant reminder that he wasn't adjusting to his new life as well as he should be. He still misjudged his own strength constantly, as the broken ceramic shards attested. He also had a hard time identifying whether his game face was showing or he was wearing his human mask, and had accidentally scared the shit out of not one, but two pizza delivery people. All in all, vampirism wasn't proving to be the roller coaster of fun Spike had always made it out to be.

Speaking of the blond idiot, the brunette was a little surprised that the bleached wonder hadn't come tearing down the hallway when he'd broken the mug, yelling at Xander to be more bloody careful. That was the way things usually worked since Spike had "adopted" the fledgling as his own Childe, thus making himself responsible for teaching Xander everything the dark-eyed man would need to know to survive. This turn of events had proved agreeable to everyone but Buffy, who insisted that since Xander had a soul, he needed to be taught by Angel. Angel hadn't seemed particularly enthusiastic about the idea (big surprise there) and Xander had responded with an unequivocal "hell no." Since then, it appeared as if the blonde Slayer had washed her hands of the situation, which was fine with Xander. He had begun to notice that whenever Buffy was around he felt little tendrils of panic running up and down his spine. Spike had since assured him that that was any normal demon's reaction to the Slayer. Mortal enemies and all, you know.

The brunette finished cleaning up the mess he had made and got another mug -carefully - down from the cabinet, noting with a sigh that there were only two or three left of the original eight. One of these days (nights, he reminded himself, we do things at night now), he and Spike were going to have to take a thrilling trip down to the local Wal-Mart and buy some more. Actually, the thought of such an outing filled him with *way* too much excitement. (It probably has something to do with the fact that I've hardly been allowed to leave the apartment in two weeks.) Spike had been extra-protective guy the three times they had gone out. Xander was expressly forbidden to go anywhere on his own, and strangely enough he found himself inclined to take orders from the older man. Spike explained that this was because the demon within Xander recognized and obeyed the Sire/Childe bond, even if Xander's soul did not.

Most of the time, Xander tried not to think of those kinds of issues at all. He had pretty much given up hoping that his new vamp state was a dream after the fourth day, but that didn't mean that he was much closer to being okay with the whole thing. It was going to take awhile, he knew, and he just hoped Spike's patience could hold out until then.

As the brunette busied himself with getting another bag of blood out of the fridge, he was suddenly aware that Spike had silently entered the kitchen. Since Xander's back was to the blue-eyed man, he wasn't sure exactly _how_ he knew Spike was behind him, but he did. He would have found the whole incident mildly disturbing if similar things hadn't been happening for the past two weeks. Damn hypersensitive vamp awareness.

"You're going to eat now?" the blond demanded from behind him.

"Was planning on it," Xander replied, popping the new mug into the microwave and pushing the timer. 

"Well, hurry up, please, it's time to go."

The slayerette froze, staring at Spike as if he had never seen him before. He wasn't sure if it was the notion of leaving the apartment (yay!) or the fact that Spike had just uttered the magic word that was freaking him out, but it was definitely one or the other, or possibly all of the above.

"Go? We're going somewhere? Somewhere that's not here we are going to?"

The Englishman looked at him as if he were an idiot, which he quite possibly was. "We're going to the Scooby meeting tonight at the Watcher's house. I also want to have a little talk with Giles about something." (Read: about _you_.)

The possibility of not being in the cramped living quarters for a few hours quickly overran any objections he might have had to being discussed behind his back. Pulling the newly-warmed mug out of the microwave, he downed its contents in one gulp and plopped it in the sink. "Ready!" he cried, grabbing his jacket from the back of a chair.

He couldn't help but grin as Spike locked the door behind them.

__

Part Two

The Scooby meeting, like every one he had been to before it, bored Xander to tears. Mostly there was impenetrable and perplexing commentary by Giles which basically meant, 'I don't know, look in the books.' Research was tedious but familiar, and the brunette soon fell into his long-established routine. He began to notice, however, that though he was acting the same way he always had, his vampire nature severely changed the way that everyone around him reacted. There was an unease in the room, especially on the part of Buffy and Giles, both of whom he caught looking at him out of the corner of his eye several times. On the other hand, Willow and Anya were both going out of their way to make him feel welcome, which was pleasant but still disturbing. What Xander really wanted was all of them to just be normal around him, to pretend that nothing had changed at all.

After a few hours of this, Giles threw everyone out of his house with the promise that they'd pick up where they left off the next night. Spike stayed behind to talk to him, shooing Xander out the door only after the younger man had promised four times to go straight back to the apartment and wait for him there. 

The young vampire hadn't gone half a block when he felt an indescribable sense of being followed. Turning abruptly, he spied Anya coming up behind him.

"Hi," she said, uncertainty apparent in her voice.

"Hey," he replied, giving her a smile that he hoped wasn't too toothy.

She gave him a tiny smile in return. "I know we haven't really had a chance to talk lately, and I was hoping now might be a good time...?"

The young man shrugged. "Sure."

"Well, now that you're a demon, I was wondering where our relationship stands. With your curse, I know you can't have intercourse without losing your soul, and I don't really see the point of continuing a relationship without it." 

Xander thought about this. "Actually, it's perfect happiness, not sex, that makes me lose my soul."

Anya fixed him with an icy glare. "Are you implying that our relations do not produce perfect happiness?"

"No!" Xander was quick to exclaim. "I'm just saying that...um..." he trailed off, unsure himself of what his point had been.

The silence that permeated the rest of the walk was distinctly uncomfortable.

* * * * * * *

Arriving back at his apartment, Xander paused before inviting Anya to come in. He knew that if she was still there when Spike got home things might disintegrate even more - the blond vampire had begun to show a jealous and possessive side whenever the ex-demon was around even when Xander was alive. Now that the youth was, essentially, a piece of Spike's property, he had no way of predicting what the chipped demon might do.

Anya looked around skeptically once she got inside. "It looks the same," she remarked, sounding surprised in spite of herself. "I thought it would look different."

"Why? Because Spike lives here now?"

Her hazel eyes locked back on his. "Because you're different."

He shook his head. "I'm not that different."

"Really?" She stepped closer to him, invading his personal space. "Are you sure?" Xander didn't even have time to think of a response before he felt her lips press against his. 

The wet warmth of her mouth, combined with the soft flesh pressing against his body, were what made Xander forget who - and what - he was. He hungrily returned the kiss, his tongue forcing its way into her mouth. When he felt her hands begin to slide under his shirt and caress his bare chest, the thin thread of his control broke. 

Grabbing her head with both hands, he savagely twisted it to the side, exposing the smooth column of her throat. The vein pulsed under his ravenous gaze, and his fragile soul wasn't powerful enough to stop the demon from taking control as his canines elongated in anticipation of the feast.

Later, there would be no doubt in Xander's mind that he would have killed her if Spike's strong arms hadn't interceded, knocking him against the wall. Anya, freed, fled through the open door and into the night. Spike stared after her, then turned toward his Childe grimly. It was time to call Angel.

to be continued... 


	3. The Fire Sermon

The phone rang four times before the familiar deep voice could be heard across the wire. 

"Hello?" A slightly annoyed and obviously awakened Angel mumbled.

"Things aren't working here," Spike began without preamble. "He's not adjusting at all. What the fuck am I supposed to do?"

The dark-haired vampire was instantly more alert. "Tell me exactly what happened," he demanded quickly.

"Nothing. Everything. He attacked that demon bint he was seeing before. Didn't kill her, though. Didn't even hurt her. I got here in time to stop him from ripping her throat out, but not before he could scare her half to death. He's out of control. His soul's not powerful enough to stop the demon from doing just about anything it wants, and because of the soul his demon won't submit completely to me, either. It's the first time I let him out of the bloody apartment and this happens. I knew he wasn't ready. I don't know what to do next." With each word, the agitated blond's voice became calmer and more controlled. Finding Anya and Xander like that had shocked and alarmed the younger man. He had up until that point believed that he could trust Xander, at least around the brunette's friends. Now it was clear that Xander couldn't be trusted at all.

There was silence on the other end of the line as Angel took a minute to digest this. "Where is he now?" he asked eventually.

"In the other room. 

"Keep an eye on him. Make sure he stays with you at all times. I'll be there as soon as I can, but there's only an hour until dawn now, so I can't leave here until tonight. Be careful until then, okay?"

"You know, Angelus, I have made other childer before. I think I know how -" 

"But how many of them had souls, Spike?" Angel interrupted. "Xander is different. His demon took control and almost killed someone that his soul cares about. He's going to be feeling incredibly guilty right now, and if you don't handle this just right there's no telling what he might try to do to himself as penance. Just...be careful."

"You said that already. Look, we'll both be all right when you haul your fat arse up here. Don't worry about us." With that, the blond abruptly hung up the phone and stalked into the living room to check on Xander. Despite what he had said to the older vampire he was becoming deeply concerned by his Sire's reminder that Xander's soul might react badly to what was, really, a small incident. Spike remembered that in his first month as a vampire at least a hundred people had met spectacularly brutal ends at his hands. One near-kill was nothing in comparison. Of course, the soul might not see it that way.

Muttering under his breath about the inherent unnaturalness of a vampire with a soul, the blue-eyed demon stopped short when he realized that the living room was empty. Not only that, but the entire apartment was empty. Xander was gone.

*********

Because Spike had not actually been the vampire that sired Xander, there was no strong psychic connection between them. Neither could sense when the other was near. Spike was especially cursing this turn of events as he raced out of the apartment building, trying frantically to recall any and every place that the fledgling vampire might have gone. Usually he would assume the whelp would want to be with his friends, but after what had just happened that had to be the last place Xander would go. His mind came up blank when he tried to consider other possibilities. Even the Bronze was closed at that late hour. Xander had only had a ten or fifteen minute start on him, but the fact that there was less than an hour until dawn meant that the blond didn't have time for guessing games. He had to find the brunette, and fast.

Eighteen minutes later Spike was pounding on the same dorm room door that he had been outside two weeks earlier, the night this had all began.

This time it was a sleepy looking Tara who answered his knock, her eyes widening in alarm as soon as she saw Spike's own worried expression. She opened the door all the way and invited the vampire in without even thinking about it. Willow was sitting up in bed, blinking as the light from the hallway blinded her.

"Spike, what's wrong?" Tara asked behind him, her quiet voice revealing her unspoken fear.

"It's Xander. He's missing. I need to know where he'd go."

"What happened?" Willow finally managed.

Spike's impatience began to get the better of him as he glared at the two young women. "I don't have time to sit here and tell the whole bloody story. There was ...an incident. He didn't actually hurt anyone but he almost did, and now me and the great poof are worried he might offer himself up as some kind of eternal atonement. Some kind of martyr for the Whitehats and all, self-sacrifice above all else. Where would he go?"

Willow contemplated this question for half a minute before her eyes lit up. "The roof. Did you check the roof?"

Spike just stared at her, confused. "The roof of what?"

"Of his apartment building. Xander once spent an entire afternoon trying to break the lock on the door that led up there. He wanted to do it in a way that no one would notice, so that he could go and sit out there whenever he wanted to be by himself. That's where he is."

She said it with such certainty that Spike didn't even bother asking her to name any other places. He simply turned on his heel and rushed back in the direction he had just come from. 

All of his spidey senses were tingling by the time the tall building finally came into view. It was very close to dawn now, time for good vampires to be curling up in bed. Instead, Spike ran up the nine flights of stairs as quickly as possible, that much closer to the coming sun.

As predicted, Xander sat alone on the flat cement surface, facing the east with a blank expression on his face. He didn't turn around until the blond was halfway across the distance that separated them, but one look at his vacant expression made Spike stop where he was.

"What do you want, Spike?" the brunette asked in a flat, dead tone which was nothing like the Xander that Spike had known.

The older man was uncertain how to best handle the situation. In the end, he resorted to the bullying attitude which he had always worn around Xander before they had first gone to bed together. "It's almost dawn you stupid git. We need to get inside. Now."

In response, the slayerette simply turned back around and studied the sky in front him, ignoring his adopted Sire.

Spike hesitantly began walking forward again, uncertain of what Xander's reaction might be. This caution proved to be the best course of action as the dark-eyed man soon whirled around, pulling a wooden stake from his pocket and brandishing it at the blond. 

"Don't try to stop me, Spike. I know what I have to do. I'm a danger to every human in Sunnydale. It's either this or sitting around, waiting for the demon to kill someone so that Buffy has to come and stake me." The young man took an unneeded breath, then looked squarely at Spike. "You'd better get inside, though. Not much use in us *both*becoming piles of dust."

Behind him, the first rays of the sun were just beginning to peek over the horizon. 

Without even thinking about what he was doing, the older vampire swiftly darted forward, grabbing the taller man around the waist in a quasi-tackle before the brunette realized what was happening. The force of the blow tumbled both men over the edge of the roof and sent them hurtling toward the street, nine floors below and safely shadowed from the harmful dawn. 

Xander landed first with a sickening CRUNCH on the pavement, Spike's grip on his torso never loosening, even as the blond vampire landed directly on top of him. After a minute, the Englishman slowly got to his feet, gathering the unconscious and broken childe in his arms. Eventually he was able to carry the still form back into the lobby of the apartment building.


End file.
